Not for the Faint of Heart

by Lex Croucher

“Yes,” Clem said. “I’m holding your hand. I’m making my move. I understand that you have trouble expressing your feelings and that my violent kidnapping was just your way of telling me you like-like me.”

“Would it kill you to react appropriately to anything?” Mariel said, as Josey helped Clemence upright. “How’s that? You want me to act kidnapped?”

Sometimes she thought she only missed the idea of a mother, a vague concept not at all rooted in her actual experience of being Regan’s daughter.

If she lived through this, no more doing other people favors. Probably. Maybe. She’d take weekends off, at least.

If someone else had come to her with a gut wound like this, she’d have called them a fool and prescribed them at least a week’s rest. It was very hard to prescribe herself a week’s rest though, because unlike everybody else in the world, she was very important and had a lot to get on with that didn’t allow for wound healing.

I set out to write the gay forest adventure of my childhood dreams and I hope it will encourage you to stomp out into the woods to touch a tree and/or make plans to overthrow the bourgeoisie.